language

The recent import from the BBC 4, Shakespeare Uncovered, is a six-part series in which one well-known public face of the theatre each episode gives an in-depth, personal walk-through a selection from Shakespeare’s plays. Four examine a single play, the other two look at more than one, related by genre. The Beeb’s website has outlines and clips from each episode, but… Read more →

The important point here is that we shouldn’t accept superficially casual dismissals of ‘vocabulary wars,’ ‘fetishization,’ or ‘language policing.’ We should look closely at the words people cling to with the most tenacity, even as they try to sound blas? about it..

I see it all the time, both online and off – Person X writes/says something, Person Y says “gee, what you just said/did was kinda *ist” and Person X comes back with “how dare you call me a *ist” (or Person Z butts in with “how dare you call X a *ist”) .

But behaviour is never a fully accurate reflection of character. Bad habits we engage in unthinkingly don’t necessarily make us generally bad people or even generally thoughtless people, but this tends to be the reaction to having those bad habits challenged as marginalising behaviours – that the challenger is calling us a bad person.

The point is that this one particular act that is being criticised has problematic cultural assumptions embedded within it, and those problematic cultural assumptions are what need to be challenged.

I may have contributed to a new term for a rhetorical ploy we see more and more. Here’s how it happened – I’m rather proud of this coinage, but wonder whether we may be reinventing the fallacious wheel. Is there an already apt term in rhetorical jargon?

When you get to my age seeing the pearl-clutchers swoon angrily over dictionaries having the temerity to change something gets old, especially when it’s yet another round of people just showing that they don’t understand what lexicographers actually do.

Despite being born with the use of both legs, many of these bipedal athletes inspire us with their commitment and guts. Having typically learned to walk around the age of one, these amazing Olympians don’t let their lurching two-phase locomotion hold them back. Thought they may look unwieldy to the naive eye, as viewers their movements soon look natural to us. We can see their grace and nimbleness shine through.